As the final match of the FIFA World Cup approaches, we’re getting more and more excited! To keep the excitement going, we’ve put together a list of our friends from the world of Puffin who are into football as well!
Here are excerpts from two books they feature in, that your child is bound to love. Let’s read football!
Chintamani Dev Gupta a.k.a Chintu from Lost in Time
As the twenty-two players faced each other and shook hands before the kick-off, I could have sworn the IPS team’s striker in front of me gave me a death stare. I looked away coolly, instead watching the referee, a tall man with unnaturally huge biceps, come forward for the toss. The coin was flipped and both teams were stationed by the captains in their positions. It was now or never. I had been anticipating this moment for such a long time.
I could feel the tension balled up in my stomach, coursing down my arms, in every muscle of my body. Then I heard the piercing whistle. We will win this fight, I told myself. And I was in action, powerfully flitting from side to side to guard my post.
The first half of the game was uneventful, neither team having been able to score. A substitute on the IPS team, who was called in after half-time, ended up playing way better than the key player and made us rather anxious. A few free kicks that went wide and some throw-ins later, the score still remained unchanged. The match had now come down to its last ten minutes. With neither team having a goal on the scoreboard, it was still anyone’s game. We just had to find a way to break the deadlock.
To top that, the IPS striker had come way too close to scoring a few goals in the second half, and I could almost feel the pressure weighing me down like a millstone. Five minutes on the clock and he was going for it yet again. The crowd erupted wildly over the striker as he slowly made his way across the field, skillfully dribbling past our agitated defenders almost halfway from the centre line. Uh-oh, my mates were struggling. I knew it was time to brace myself. Now it was up to me. Very slowly, I bent my knees and locked my hands close to each other, my shin guards digging into my skin. My ears were ringing with the roars of exhilaration and anticipation from the audience.
In an unhindered moment, almost at the edge of the penalty box, my opponent bent backward ever so slightly and, with a powerful instep kick, shot the ball to the left. I just couldn’t gauge where it was headed for half a second, as it burst from a jumble of stomping feet. Would it swing out and miss the bar? No! It might just make it! Simultaneously I dived to the side, my hands outstretched desperately.
The microseconds slowed down, the past, the present and the future all coming together as I soared towards the hurtling ball. I stretched every muscle of my body and steeled every nerve, until I was slicing through the air like a bird, a bee, a butterfly. Like a boy who had flown through the air before. I could feel someone, something, lifting me higher and higher until the tip of my middle finger kissed tough leather and I became one with the goal. I was the goal.
We won.
Amar Kishen a.k.a. Butterfingers from Goal, Butterfingers
A nervous Jayaram tried to instil confidence in his team. ‘We need not one but two goals. Get them!’ He replaced Kishore and Arun with Pratyush and Ujjal. The double substitution paid off as Ghana began to dominate the match. Argentina was content to sit back and try to hold on to its lead. As time ticked by, Ghana was still looking for that elusive goal, despite the best efforts of Jayaram who, in frustration at not finding an opening, began to attempt shots whenever he found himself with the ball. Tempers began to fray when Arjun received a pass from Ajay and shot it past Visudh to score what he thought was the equalizer; unfortunately it was called offside. Arjun began to argue fiercely with Mr Sunderlal and stopped only after Jayaram intervened.
As the game got rough, Dipankar of Argentina pulled Arjun’s hair hard and brought him down, then tripped and fell over him. Arjun landed on his injured hand and took full advantage of that by holding his hand and stomach in turn and writhing in pain. Mr Sunderlal looked a little suspicious, but Arjun continued to moan. Showing Dipankar a yellow card, Mr Sunderlal awarded Ghana a penalty that was neatly converted by Jayaram. After that, in spite of vigorous forays by the forwards of both teams, no goals were scored. Argentina came pretty close to going ahead but Amar brought off a spectacular save, jumping high and tipping the ball away.
When it was full time, the two teams were locked at 2–2, and it was time for the penalty shoot-out. With the ‘vuvuzelas’ providing plaintive and jarring background music, Ishaan took the first penalty for Argentina, kicking the ball high into the right corner while Amar, judging wrongly, went to the left. Next Jayaram, after taking his time, took the kick, missed and hit the crossbar. ‘Oh no!’ said Kiran, dismayed. ‘Wearing Gyan on his shirt and missing a penalty like him!’ A roar went up from Argentina’s supporters while Jayaram just sat down, face in hands until Abdul gently led him away. But the next shot from Milosh was beautifully saved by Amar who, smartly anticipating the direction this time, fell over the ball and saved it. Arjun was given the ball and in an audacious move that had everyone gasping in disbelief, turned quickly and did a backflick penalty kick that luckily for him found the net.
Arya took the next penalty and slipped as she was about to kick, causing the ball to roll to a stop before the goal line. Shoulders hunched, she forlornly joined her team and burst into tears. Ujjal’s kick was fast and furious and Visudh just couldn’t get to it. Hitesh who took the next penalty sent the ball high to a corner of the goal. Amar didn’t have a chance. It was Ghana’s turn next and Pratyush’s shot was in. Visudh himself came to take his team’s fifth penalty. His team huddled around him and there was a hush around the grounds. If he missed, Ghana would win. Jayaram went to talk to Amar. Visudh took careful aim and kicked it beautifully over Amar’s head but Amar bounced high as if he had anti-gravity paste on his shoes and got the tip of one finger to it. Though he hurt his finger badly, the ball’s trajectory got altered and it rolled out of harm’s way. Ghana had won the World Cup!
James Bond: How It All Began!
M laid down his pipe and stared at it tetchily. ‘We have no choice. We’re just going to bring forward this other chap you’ve been preparing. But you didn’t tell me his name.’
‘It’s Bond, sir,’ the Chief of Staff replied. ‘James Bond.’
The sea keeps its secrets. But not this time.
One body. Three bullets. 007 floats in the waters of Marseille, killed by an unknown hand.
It’s time for a new agent to step up. Time for a new weapon in the war against organised crime.
This is the story of the birth of a legend, in the brutal underworld of the French Riviera.
Let’s read an excerpt from the book here-
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‘In the last transmission he made, a week before his death, 007 said he had concrete evidence.’
‘What sort of evidence?’
‘Unfortunately, he didn’t say. If 007 had one fault, it was that he liked to keep his cards close to his chest. In that same transmission, he mentioned that he had arranged to meet someone who could tell him exactly what she was up to – but once again, he didn’t tell us who it was.’ Tanner sighed. ‘The meeting took place at the basin of La Joliette and that was where he was killed.’
‘He must have left notes – or something. Have we been to his house?’
‘He had an apartment in the Rue Foncet and the French police searched it from top to bottom. They found nothing.’
‘Perhaps the opposition got there first.’
‘It’s possible, sir.’
M tamped down his pipe with a thumb that had, over the years, become immune to the heat of the smouldering tobacco. ‘You know what surprises me in all this, Chief of Staff? How could 007 allow himself to be shot at close range in the middle of a crowded city? Seven o’clock in the evening, in the summer months . . . it wouldn’t even have been dark! And why wasn’t he carrying his weapon?’
‘I was puzzled by that,’ Tanner agreed. ‘I can only assume he must have been meeting someone he knew, a friend.’
‘Could he have actually met with Madame 16 herself? Or could she have found out about the meeting and intercepted it?’
‘Both those thoughts had occurred to me, sir. The CIA have people out there and we’ve been trying to talk to them. In fact the whole area is crawling with security services of one sort or another. But so far . . . nothing.’
The heavy, sweet smell of Capstan Navy Flake hung in the air. M used the pipe to punctuate his thoughts. The age-old ritual, the lighting and the relighting, gave him time to consider the decisions that had to be made.
‘We need someone to look into what happened,’ he went on. ‘This business with the Corsicans doesn’t sound particularly pressing. If there are fewer drugs coming out of France, that’s something to be grateful for. But I’m not having one of my best agents put down like a dog. I want to know who did this and why and I want that person removed from the field. And if it turns out that this woman, Sixtine, was responsible, that goes for her too.’
Tanner understood exactly what M was saying. He wanted an eye for an eye. Somebody had to be killed.
‘Who do you want me to send? I’m afraid 008 is still out of action.’
‘You’ve spoken to Sir James?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Sir James Molony was the senior neurologist at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington and one of the few men who knew M both socially and professionally. Over the years he had treated a number of agents for injuries, including stab wounds and bullet wounds, always with complete insouciance and discretion. ‘It’s going to be another few weeks.’
‘And 0011?’
‘In Miami.’
M laid down the pipe and stared at it tetchily. ‘Well, then we have no choice. We’re just going to bring forward this other chap you’ve been preparing. It’s been on my mind to expand the Double- O Section anyway. Their work is too important and right now we’ve got one injured, another one dead . . . we need to be prepared. How is he doing?’
‘Well, sir, he managed his first kill without any difficulty. It was that Kishida business. The Japanese cipher man.’
‘Yes, yes. I read the report. He’s certainly a good shot and he kept his nerve. At the same time, though, firing a bullet into the thirty-sixth floor of a New York skyscraper doesn’t necessarily prove anything. I’d like to see how he works at closer quarters.’
‘We may very well find out,’ Tanner replied. ‘He’s in Stockholm now. If all goes well, he’ll be reporting back in the next twenty-four hours. I already have his fitness report, his medical and psychological evaluations. He’s come through with flying colours and, for what it’s worth, I like him personally.’
‘If he gets your recommendation, that’s good enough for me, Chief of Staff.’ M frowned. ‘You didn’t tell me his name.’
‘It’s Bond, sir,’ the chief of staff replied. ‘James Bond.’
The Three Ghosts your Child will Love!
The Curious Case of the Sweet and Spicy Sweetshop by Nandini Nayar is a spooky story packed with curious characters, a hilarious hero and a super-fun plot. While reading this book, your child will be in for a double treat- witnessing witty family relations and discovering the magical world of sweets!
Most ghosts are super scary but here are 3 ghosts your child will absolutely love:
Bhagwandas Mithaiwala
Plump man with hair cut short, Bhagwandas was dressed in a full sleeved shirt in his portrait. While looking at the portrait, this was a man, Laddoo thought, who probably enjoyed eating the sweets he made and sold. The post-master and Bhagwandas were best friends. The postmaster remembered Bhagwandas as a cheerful man, with cheeks like his famous gulab jamuns and a voice as thick and caramelly as the best sugar syrup!
Ramcharandas Mithaiwala
Vishnu’s grandfather, Ramcharandas was a serious looking man. A man with curly grey hair, that clustered around his head, he had a droopy moustache over his lips and looked serious. He was famous for being incredibly suspicious! He was convinced that people were trying to steal his recipes. So he built the sweetshop— without a single window. He wanted to make sure that not even a whiff of the fragrance of the sweets could escape the room.
Girijakumar Mithaiwala
Vishnu’s great-grandfather was a thin man with a melancholy expression on his face. He was the one who set up the sweet shop. He built his house and the sweetshop under it because he believed that no sweet maker should live far away from his shop.
8 Things they Don’t Tell you about Buyer-Seller Relationships
Buyer-seller relationships develop over time and business has always been an endless series of games played by the two.
In Games Customers Play, author Ramesh Dorairaj shows you how to spot such games and change the rules to your advantage. So that it doesn’t matter what the deal is, you will always win!
Below we explore some facts about buyer-seller relationships, that you may not have known, from Dorairaj’s book Games Customers Play.
Customers have learnt to use these myths to design practices and templates for how to interact with sellers and suppliers. Examples include elaborate procurement processes, reverse auctions, price bench-marking during a contract’s duration, renegotiating contracts much before expiry, feigning dissatisfaction to wangle discounts, and with holding payments for flimsy reasons.
The result is cognitive dissonance or mental discomfort arising from a disconnect in personal beliefs, ideas and values. This discomfort has negative consequences, like increased stress and irritability.
They have to do this consistently as millennials and post-millennials are joining the workforce and becoming customers.
Not all customers want to have a ‘close’ seller or service provider relationship. The same service or product can be viewed by different customers quite differently. Understanding this can help you position a product uniquely for various customers. Your product can be seen in a new light by different people within the same customer organization.
It is now possible not to speak of market segments but have marketing campaigns that are customized to individuals. Some firms use predictive algorithms to gauge a buyer’s future needs. But these algorithms do not consider the nature of the interaction that a customer prefers. Some prefer a quick, one-click purchase, while others will take time to visit, speak to a sales or customers service rep, explore alternatives and arrive at a decision.
A set of engagements makes a relationship. Thus, relationships are born when there are a number of engagements between the customer and the seller. One-off engagements don’t create a relationship.
The Get It stage is the first part of the engagement and has to do with the customer decision to purchase goods and services. This stage is about all the interactions that happen before the seller delivers the product of the service. The Use It stage is when the customer begins to use the product or experience the service. The Fix It stage is when the product or service does not work as planned and needs to be fixed.
Storytelling as Life and Art – By Usha Alexander
Usha Alexander grew up in Pocatello, Idaho, as the second of three children. She has lived in four countries and continues to visit as many as she can. Her first novel, Only the Eyes are Mine, was selected as a Semi-Finalist in the Multicultural Fiction category for the 2006 Independent Publishers Book Awards.
She is the author of three books, the newest of which is The Legend o f Virinara. The book is set in ancient India and is a thrilling tale of adventure and political intrigue that stirs up timeless questions about war and peace.
In this piece written by Usha Alexander, she talks about how we each tell ourselves the story of our own life, whether in large ways or small.
‘It was only some twenty years ago that I finally returned here to my ancestral lands, called back by the need to remember, to gather up the fragments, to reconstruct the cracked vessel of my life and pour from it my own story. I don’t know if any good will come from this exercise, whether there’s any wisdom to be had from it, but I feel compelled to put down my tale. Who knows why one feels this human urge to preserve and perpetuate ourselves, our visions and desires? Who knows why this need for art, this brazen denial of death and emptiness?’ ~ Shanti, The Legend of Virinara, page 5
Like Shanti, the primary narrator of The Legend of Virinara, most of us have moments when we reflect upon our own lives. We reckon with our choices, good or bad, to understand how we became the person we are today. We look for a coherent thread of cause and effect, of consistency in our own personality, of personal growth running through the events in our memories like beads. Perhaps we need to understand our own drives or desires—or explain to others why we’ve done what we’ve done. We might wonder what it all means—the sum of our life, thus far—or whether we can draw any lessons from it to teach others, to do better ourselves, or to build our sense of connection with others.
So we each tell ourselves the story of our own life. We do it in large ways and small. It may be a boy marvelling that he survived a war in which his parents perished. Or a mother wondering at her decision to take a job that brought her overseas and made her children’s lives unrecognizable from her own. It may be a young graduate trying to understand why she didn’t get that job or promotion she was surely qualified for. But however great or small or even petty our questions loom, compelled by a need for connection, continuity and meaning within the vagaries of life, we may tell ourselves almost anything to create a story that suits our needs, up to and including the grandiloquent and absurd; we even invoke the supernatural.
Consider two famous historical examples: Joan d’Arc was a French girl who led an army into battle against the British in 1429. As a teenager, she presented herself to the king of France, saying she’d been in conversation with several Christian saints since childhood and now god instructed her to lead an army; the king believed her. But soon after her battles, Joan’s story became less convincing to others; she was burned at the stake for heresy. Later, her version of events was re-evaluated and deemed sensible, so she was labelled a martyr and a saint. Similarly, in 1881 a lawyer, Charles J. Guiteau, assassinated the American President James Garfield, a champion of equal rights for the former slaves. Guiteau said that god told him he must get rid of this President to change the course of national politics and so—he insisted at his trial—what he’d done wasn’t murder. But Guiteau was hanged for his crime. His version of events was discounted as a symptom of an undetermined illness.
However else we might characterize the accounts d’Arc and Guiteau gave of their own actions, we must also recognize that their self-narratives gave them courage, absolved them of guilt, and helped them sift through or bind together their understanding of themselves in the world. As such, they remain testaments to our common human need to impose story upon our individual experience. And while theirs may differ vastly from our own self-narratives in details and biases or maps of belief, perhaps they are less different in their richness and force, in their essential creative impulse to find meaning and purpose.
We are inventive with our personal narratives: We build chronology, connecting the dots of cause and effect, usually reasonably, but not always. We imbue actions and outcomes with meaning. We select which facts and feelings to include. Our fears and egos shape our perceptions. We embellish facts to make ourselves feel good. Or to make ourselves feel bad. We disregard information that doesn’t fit our biases. We forget or misremember what makes us uncomfortable. We bridge the unknown with presumption, deduction or imagination, even fabricating details or whole events, adjusting the story to our needs.
It is in this very shadowland between ‘truth’ and imagination, a realm of uncertain borders, where each of us actually lives, alone. It’s here, among the shadows and flickers of our incomplete understanding and our desires, that we fashion narratives of our lives and our world, hoping to communicate it to those around us. We come up with stories that are always part ‘fact’ and part ‘fiction’. So every one of us is actually a storyteller, a world-builder, whether or not we’re aware of our own powers or how we wield them. And this innate storytelling impulse, which we use to bind together our inner and outer lives, is a seed of general human creativity.
As a novelist, I try to excavate this, to understand how we use storytelling, how it works for us, how it works against us—for it provides a broad and ever-astonishing view into what it means to be human. The power of storytelling serves as a theme in The Legend of Virinara, which depicts, in part, how stories are used to create realities. But understanding the foundations of our self-narratives can also enrich the creation of intentional fiction. Some of the richest characters and most deeply moving novels seem to stick close to the writer’s own emotional life, applying the same perceptive and imaginative facility they’ve surely used to shape their own life stories in order to imagine the lives of others.
One example that jumps immediately to mind is V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas, with its heartbreakingly wry pathos. Though the details of the story are altered, one feels acutely that Naipaul is writing a paean to his own father, his struggles and triumphs, through the lens of a loving but troubled son. Something similar is discernible in Harper Lee’s late-published first novel, Go Set a Watchman, which, despite all its flaws, reveals her tormented struggle to understand the corruption of those whom she dearly loved and admired as a child. At moments, the distinction between young Lee, the author, and Jean Louise, her character, seems to disappear.
As readers, too, we bring our own sense of story to make sense of a creative work. The novels we often enjoy the most are those we recognize as uncannily ‘true’ and familiar through the questions, metaphors or feelings they generate, perhaps mapping in some way onto our own shadowlands. Jane Austen confined her writing to the very small world of British landed gentry of the late eighteenth century; none of us readers have lived in her time and place, yet she was able to mine the dissatisfactions and pleasures of the heart in a way that’s almost universally relatable. Arundhati Roy pulled up something similarly universal about the vulnerabilities of childhood in her first novel, The God of Small Things.
As Chinua Achebe said, ‘Art is and was always in the service of man. Our ancestors created their myths and legends and told their stories for a human purpose.’ Storytelling is, above all, the art of social beings. A novelist’s greatest satisfaction comes from knowing that she has connected with a reader, touched another human heart or mind and illuminated a patch of their world, in resonance with her own.
The One Story and the Many – by Anjum Hasan
Anjum Hasan is the author of several books including Lunatic in My Head, The Cosmopolitans, Neti, Neti, Street on the Hill and Difficult Pleasures. Her latest book, A Day in the Life, is a collection of fourteen well-crafted stories that give us a sense of the daily life of a wide cast of characters.
Her books have been nominated for various awards including the Man Asian Literary Prize, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, the Hindu Best Fiction Award and the Crossword Fiction Award.
In this special feature written by her, Hasan tells us about her relationship to the form of the short story.
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Anjum Hasan
The first short story that haunted me was Anton Chekhov’s The Bet. Till then, I believed that narrative resolution meant happy endings. Rip van Winkle might find, when he wakes up, that twenty years have passed, or Sinbad will see that his only hope of survival after the shipwreck is to hang on for life to one leg of the giant roc, but these disruptions are only delicious means to redress. Whereas all the dark prefigurings of The Bet end in nothing – the hero simply vanishes on the last page.
The story is the case study of a philosophical question – is life imprisonment better or worse than the death penalty? The young lawyer who stakes fifteen years to prove his point does not emerge triumphant from the cell where he has been living out his self-imposed solitude. He decides – following on a decade and a half of the most voracious bibliomania, hundreds of books consumed and discarded – that human concerns don’t matter one whit, and then he slips out of the garden gate and disappears. To where? And why does he forgo all that money, two million roubles, that he is to get for winning the bet? As a ten or eleven-year-old, immune to irony, this tortured man’s strange renunciation and sudden disappearance, not to speak of that unclaimed cash, bothered me. Chekhov, master of enigmatic endings, provides no answer. I had to learn to live with my discomfort, accept the slippery nature of the modern short story, understand that its author might open a wide window on time and then leave it ajar for all eternity.
But the special pang that accompanies the reading of a good – that is essential yet elusive – story remained through the years of my coming of age as a reader. I experienced it with Tagore’s Kabuliwallah in which the unlikely friendship between a vagrant man and a radiant child can, once time has passed, never be recovered – no matter that the author, unlike Chekhov, does provide recompense in the form of a few banknotes to temper our sadness with. I felt it too with DH Lawrence’s The Rocking-Horse Winner where money itself is the object of lust and there can never be enough of it. Yet indulge too avidly in this passion and it can turn against you.
Over time I also realised that I wanted to do the same – not so much play with mutability as a literary device as snatch half a moment from the flow and give it life in writing. The short story is the ultimate temporal – and secular – form. There are no earlier incarnations and no hereafter. Now is the sum total of the aeons and this is all there is to the expanse. Anything can be a story and everything actually is. I’m always charmed by that anecdote about the demonically prolific Saadat Hasan Manto boasting that he could write a story on any subject. Someone knocked at the door of his office when he worked at AIR, Delhi, and asked “May I come in?” Manto was challenged to write a play by that name which he promptly turned out.
But this carpe diem spirit means that the older traditions of storytelling with their familiar tropes, their indeterminate locations, their shared myths, have to be put aside. For the short story is also the locus of a progressive imagination, one for which the people matter but the person matters more. In most Indian languages the break from the literature of the past resulted in the flowering not just of the short story but literary movements around it – ranging from the Nayi Kahani writers in Hindi and their championing of interior life to the hard-boiled urbanism of the Manikodi group in Tamil Nadu. Exploring the genesis of the form in his essay ‘The Indian Story’, Amitav Ghosh records its journey from the late 19th century to a good hundred years on. He writes that “the story was the chosen instrument of the subcontinent in the spring time of its nationhood.” But it is no more our weapon of choice, suggests his essay, which was published towards the close of the previous century. The short story has, perhaps, had its day.
This might explain our contemporary ambivalence about it. Modernism has passed some of us by and our paradigms for the short story are still Saki and O. Henry, rather than Manto and Carver. Then there is the growing occlusion of telling of a story with storytelling – not all writers of the short story are aiming to be campfire entertainers in this sense but the tag is hard to escape. One is either a great storyteller or a self-indulgent aesthete; nothing, it seems, can bridge literary pleasure with pleasure taken in literature. One is always tempted to quote Nirad C Chaudhuri to those who insist on the distinction between style and substance. “There is no such thing in literary works as good substance spoilt by a bad style, or poor substance undeservedly accompanied by a good style. To believe in such theories is to have the stupidity which is dead to matter and the vulgarity which is dead to form.” But Chaudhuri himself, precisely because of his English hauteur, the proud certainty of that tone, can seem hopelessly old-fashioned.
We are quick to dismiss values that seem out of date, always on guard against nostalgia in our reading of literature but curiously, because of our growing obsession with specifically Indian narratives and a singularly Indian identity, have taken to refurbishing antiquities in our fiction. We want to retell rather than tell, and our retellings are informed less by ideas about the past and more by the desire to just invoke it. The popularity of these invocations makes me ask if we really have lost our appetite for the here and now. Was it misplaced, this desire we once had to cleave to the short-lived, the fragmentary, the unresolved? Are we in search of the one story that will capture it all – the overarching explanation, rather than the numerous small ones? Is that a genuine need and if so can the short story address it?
I happened to find something of an answer in a marvellously metaphysical essay by John Berger on the nature of time and, thereby, the nature of stories. In older, more religiously inclined cultures, the timeless was a constant presence but this conception of a realm beyond human time has been edged out of today’s worldview, he argues in ‘Go Ask the Time’. And yet, despite this dominant, two-century-old, positivist European image of time, we can’t quite suppress our longing for that which goes beyond it. We’re made that way. “A need for what transcends time, or is mysteriously spared by time, is built into the very nature of the human mind and imagination.”
If we turn away from the European lens we will find a conviction underlying many traditions of storytelling – many discourses – that everything to happen has already happened before, says Berger. This is a realisation that the writer like me, trying to compose that one unique if microscopic narrative, that one telling that has not been told before, wants to stave off. But perhaps the most long-sighted of the storytellers have always known it. Talking about the prose of realist fiction and its gradual seeping into Indian writing, Ghosh in the essay I mentioned speaks of it as “a form of address that creates the illusion of objectivity by distancing itself from its subjects; it is a style of narrative in which the machinery of narration is a source of embarrassment that must always be concealed.” This struggle is still evident in Indian fiction, he says. So perhaps it is this – the embarrassment with the modern rather than the insight into the mythological – that makes us want to go back to a time before realism.
AK Ramanujan, that great theorist of Indian narratives, has described in his ‘Is there an Indian Way of Thinking?’ how till the 19th century no Indian text came without a framing narrative; every story was encased in a meta-story. Berger would have loved, for its effortless scrambling of linear time, one of Ramanujan’s examples. When the Pandava brothers are exiled in the forest, and Yudhishthira is despondent because he has lost wife and kingdom, a sage visits him and tells him the story of Nala. Nala too has had to forfeit wife and kingdom but then he fights his brother and gets everything back. “Yudhishthira, following the full curve of Nala’s adventures, sees that he is only halfway through his own, and sees his present in perspective, himself as a story yet to be finished.”
So it could be that Chekhov’s hero, when he runs away from his cell, is fleeing the paltriness of the short story itself, seeking a cosmic vista that no worldly thing, least of all money, can offer. Chekhov cannot follow him because that is not his business. His writ runs only in that arena where each tiny, ordinary, human detail is so mesmerising a story there appears to be no point asking for more. And that’s where I hope to remain too, in the grip of the strangeness and wonder of this present time.
Rain + Books = The Perfect Monsoon
This monsoon we have a great list of new books for you! Whether you enjoy literary classic, thriller, fiction or mythology, we’ve got you covered with books by authors such as Devdutt Pattanaik, Premchand, Alex Salkever and Vikram Sood – to name a few.
So this summer, cuddle up with a cup of tea and a good read!
Take a look at our list of July books!
Acid
Two striking women, Kamala and Shaly, helm an unusual household, fuelled by their intense, tempestuous romance in a rapidly changing Bangalore. Acid unravels the secrets that lurk beneath the surface of our lives, and marks the entry of a searing new voice in the Indian literary landscape.
Bihar Diaries
Bihar Diaries narrates the thrilling account of how Amit Lodha arrested Vijay Samrat, one of Bihar’s most feared ganglords, notorious for extortion, kidnapping and the massacre of scores of people. Bihar Diaries captures vividly the battle of nerves between a dreaded outlaw and a young, urbane IPS officer.
Premchand Short Stories (Volume 1-5)
Munshi Premchand’s prolific writing contributed largely to shaping the genre of the short story as we know it in India. His range and diversity were limitless as he tacked the themes of romance, satire, gender politics and social inequality with unmatched skill and compassion and this miniseries brings together some of his most celebrated short stories.
This miniseries brings together some of his most celebrated short stories on the themes of women, caste, the city, village life and animals.
Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jehan
Acclaimed historian Ruby Lal uncovers the rich life and world of Nur Jahan, rescuing this dazzling figure from patriarchal and orientalist clichés of romance and intrigue, while giving a new insight into the lives of the women and the girls during the Mughal Empire, even where scholars claim there are no sources. In this book, Nur Jahan finally receives her due in a deeply researched and evocative biography that awakens us to a fascinating history.
How India Manages Its National Security
In this authoritative and comprehensive survey of the challenges a changing global security environment poses to India, former deputy national security advisor Arvind Gupta outlines the important aspects of the country’s security apparatus and how they interface to confront internal and external conflicts.
India Moving: A History of Migration
To understand how millions of people have moved-from, to and within India-India Moving: A History of Migration embarks on a journey laced with evidence, argument and wit, providing insights into topics like the slave trade and migration of workers, travelling business communities, refugee crises and the roots of contemporary mass migration from Bihar and Kerala, covering terrain that often includes diverse items such as mangoes, dosas and pressure cookers.
Daughters of Legacy: How a New Generation of Women Is Redefining India Inc.
What are the challenges and perks of handling age-old legacies?
If you come into a position of power through a position of privilege, how do you make sure that you earn respect, more so if you are a woman?
These and many more questions are what Daughters of Legacy seeks to answer through the stories of twelve successful women who grew up with strong business lineages.
Mandodari: Queen of Lanka
Borrowing from Sanghadasa’s Jaina version of the Ramayana, Mandodari-one of the least known characters of the Hindu epic-is finally given a voice.
Considered to be one of the most beautiful apsaras, she was married off to the mighty Ravana, the legendary king of Lanka. In her story, she speaks about her struggles after her marriage, her insecurities and her pious nature that challenged her husband’s growing aspirations. She narrates the rise of Ravana’s power and the blunders he made that ultimately caused the downfall of Lanka.
The Unending Game: A Spy’s Insights into Espionage
As a country’s stature and reach grow, so do its intelligence needs. This is especially true for one like India that has ambitions of being a global player even as it remains embattled in its own neighbourhood. The Unending Game tackles these questions while providing a national and international perspective on gathering external intelligence, its relevance in securing and advancing national interests, and why intelligence is the first playground in the game of nations.
The Dhoni Touch: Unravelling the Enigma that is Mahendra Singh Dhoni
For over a decade, Mahendra Singh Dhoni has captivated the world of cricket and over a billion Indians with his incredible ingenuity as captain, wicketkeeper and batsman. Bharat Sundaresan, author of The Dhoni Touch tracks down the cricketer’s closest friends in Ranchi and artfully presents the different shades of Dhoni-the Ranchi boy, the fauji, the diplomat, Chennai’s beloved Thala, the wicketkeeping Pythagoras-and lays bare the man underneath.
Master Growth Hacking – The best kept secret of new age Indian startups
Full of riveting stories, Master Growth Hacking lets you learn from the pioneers of growth hacking in India. There are interviews with the founders of Zomato, IndiaMART, ShopClues, UrbanClap, Paisabazaar, Furlenco, FusionCharts, WittyFeed, UpGrad and a lot more.
Growth hacking is the new growth mantra that start-ups are using and don’t want you to learn about!
Frontiers
Aurangzeb’s aim is to conquer the kingdoms of the Deccan and expand the great Mughal empire to include hitherto uncharted, rebellious territories. Raja Shivaji, a jagirdar from the hills of western Deccan, dreams of Swaraj and has raised his sword against all those who stand between him and his goal.
Theirs is a battle of wit and might-one in which neither will give up. Frontiers, a historical saga, brings to life the complex and ever-shifting dynamics between these two arch nemeses.
Chanakya and the Art of Getting Rich
Chanakya’s Arthashastra is an unrivalled political treatise that has been used by scholars, academics and leaders across the world. In Chanakya and the Art of Getting Rich, Radhakrishnan Pillai brings out the inherent lessons from Arthashastra to present a strategic and practical way of wealth creation. This is a holistic study, written for anyone and everyone.
Your Happiness was Hacked
We’ve become a tribe of tech addicts, and it’s not entirely our fault.
But we can reclaim our lives without dismissing technology. The authors of Your Happiness was Hacked explain how to avoid getting hooked on tech and how to define and control the roles that it plays and could play in our lives. This profound and timely book turns personal observation into a handy guide to adapting to our new reality of omnipresent technology.
Shyam: An Illustrated Retelling of the Bhagavata
The Bhagavata is the story of Krishna, known as Shyam to those who find beauty, wisdom and love in his dark complexion.
Shyam: An Illustrated Retelling of the Bhagavata seamlessly weaves the story from Krishna’s birth to his death, or rather from his descent to the butter-smeared world of happy women to his ascent from the blood-soaked world of angry men.
Under American Eyes: Mark Twain in Bombay
For 230 years, America’s engagement with India, Afghanistan and Pakistan has been characterized by short-term thinking and unintended consequences. Beginning with American traders in India in the eighteenth century, the region has become a locus for American efforts-secular and religious-to remake the world in its image. Even as South Asia has undergone tumultuous and tremendous changes from colonialism to the world wars, the Cold War and globalization, the United States has been a crucial player in regional affairs.
In the definitive history of the US involvement in South Asia, The Most Dangerous Place by Srinath Raghavan presents a gripping account of America’s political and strategic, economic and cultural presence in the region.
Of the many interesting incidents and lesser known anecdotes in the book, one interesting narrative is Mark Twain’s visit to Bombay. Here is an excerpt from it.
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On a sunny morning in January 1896, the visiting American— decked out in a white suit and straw hat—took a stroll on the outskirts of Bombay. On seeing a row of Indian washermen sweating it out, he asked his guide, ‘Are they breaking those stones with clothes?’ Samuel Langhorne Clemens had kept his sense of humour despite the fact that he had practically been forced to travel to India. A failed venture with a typesetting machine and the bankruptcy of his publishing firm had left Mark Twain ensnared in a web of debt: of over $1,00,000. To shake this off, the fiftyyear- old writer had embarked on a year-long lecture trip covering a hundred cities in Australia and New Zealand, South Africa and the British Isles, Ceylon and India.
In Bombay, Twain’s first appearance was in the Novelty Theatre before an overflowing audience worshipping ‘at the shrine of the world’s great humourist when he made his debut before his first Indian audience’. Twain spoke of, among other things, how there were 352 different kinds of sins, so that ‘the industrious persons could commit them all in one year and be inoculated against all future sins’. He told stories, some apocryphal, about George Washington and other great Americans, and also read a chapter from Tom Sawyer. Twain lunched with the Governor in his official residence and met Jamsetji Tata over dinner.
Like many well-informed Americans of his generation, Mark
Twain had thought of India as a land of fantasy: ‘an imaginary
land—a fairy land, dreamland, a land made of poetry and moonlight
for the Arabian Nights to do their gorgeous miracles in’. Ahead of his trip, he had written jocularly to Kipling, ‘I shall come riding my ayah with his tusks adorned with silver bells and ribbons and escorted by a troop of native howdahs richly clad and mounted upon a herd of wild buffalos; and you must be on hand with a few bottles of ghee, for I shall be thirsty.’3 After spending two months in the country and visiting over sixteen cities and towns, Twain concluded that India was the most interesting country on the planet. But his view of India was a tad more realistic: ‘This is indeed India—the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle . . . the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.’
Twain was a curious and sympathetic traveller. The people, he wrote, were ‘pleasant and accommodating’. ‘They are kindly people . . . The face and bearing that indicate a surly spirit and a bad heart seemed rare among Indians,’ he added. The sight of an Indian servant in his hotel being needlessly struck by a European manager reminded him of his childhood in the American South and the stain of slavery on his own country. The ‘thatched group of native houses’ along the Hooghly River took him back to ‘the negro quarters, familiar to me from nearly forty years ago—and so for six hours this has been the sugar coast of the Mississippi’.5 Even Indian religion and spirituality, of which he had had no high opinion, Twain encountered with an open mind. On the massive Hindu religious festival in Allahabad, he wrote, ‘It is wonderful, the power of a faith like that.’ Meeting an Indian saint in Benares, Twain gave him an autographed copy of Huckleberry Finn and noted his admiration for men who ‘went into the solitudes to live in a hut and study the sacred writings and meditate on virtue and holiness and seek to attain them’. Twain had heard of the storied tradition of ‘thuggee’ or ritual strangling as a boy in America and wrote at inordinate length about it in his account of the passage through India. Nevertheless, he also observed, ‘We white people are merely modified Thugs; Thugs fretting under the restraints of a not very thick skin of civilization.’
All the same, Twain’s views of India were shaped by a sense of civilizational hierarchy. While India was ‘the cradle of human race, birth place of human speech’ and so forth, it was a civilization that had no notion of ‘progress’: ‘repeating and repeating and repeating, century after century, age after age, the barren meaningless process’. India had been the ‘first civilization’ and remained stuck there. If this was redolent of Britain’s ideological justification for the conquest of India, Twain more explicitly endorsed the political rationale of the Raj: ‘Where there are eighty nations and several hundred governments, fighting and quarrelling must be the common business of life; unity of purpose and policy are impossible.’ The beneficence of British rule flowed logically from these premises. ‘When one considers what India was under her Hindoo and Mohammedan rulers, and what she is now; when he remembers the miseries of her millions then and protections and humanities which they enjoy now, he must concede that the most fortunate thing that has ever befallen that empire was the establishment of British supremacy here.’
7 Quotes from Still Me that will Make you Fall in Love All Over Again.
Jojo Moyes- the author of bestsellers- Me Before You and After You brings the third Lou Clark novel- Still Me. The third book sees Lou arrive in New York to start a new life. She is quickly hurled into the world of the super-rich Gopniks: Leonard and his second wife, Agnes. Before she knows what’s happening, Lou is mixing in New York high society, where she meets Joshua Ryan, a man who brings with him a whisper of her past.
Here are 7 quotes from the book, Still Me that will make you fall in love all over again.
30 Books You Must Read if you Love Football
Football is the unifying factor for many people across the world. Fans in those 90 minutes of play experience a wide range of emotions, from sadness to euphoria. There’s no doubt why football is deemed as one of the most spectated sports in the world.
So, if you also live and breathe football, here is a list of books you must read:
Ronaldo 2018
A three-time winner of the FIFA Ballon d’Or, Cristiano Ronaldo’s status as a footballing superstar is unquestionable. In this biography, Madrid-based journalist Luca Caioli tells the inside story of the global superstar, featuring insights from those who know him best and even the man himself. Updated to include all the action from the 2016/17 season, Ronaldo lays bare the career of a modern footballing icon.
Messi 2018
Having risen to the top of the game more than a decade ago, Lionel Messi has matured into the perfect team player. As the star of an exceptional Barcelona team, he has won more silverware than most football clubs. Messi is Luca Caioli’s classic portrait of a footballing icon, now fully updated to include all the action from 2016/17. Featuring exclusive testimony from those who know him best, it offers an unrivalled behind-the-scenes look at the career of a sporting giant.
Neymar 2018
Having long been hailed as a future star of world soccer, Neymar has thrived under the pressure of expectation. Already well on his way to becoming Brazil’s all-time top scorer, his legacy is already taking shape. Updated to include all the action from the 2016/17 season, Neymar paints a compelling picture of the life and career of a global superstar.
Pogba
When Manchester United re-signed their former youth player Paul Pogba for a world record fee in the summer of 2016, they made a powerful statement. In the four years since he had left the Reds, Pogba had blossomed into a midfielder of undoubted world class. With exclusive insights from those closest to the player, Luca Caioli’s Pogba is an in-depth portrait of one of modern football’s greatest talents.
Griezmann
Quick, incisive and versatile, Antoine Griezmann is the ultimate modern forward. Arriving in 2014 to join an Atletico Madrid side persistently challenging for the biggest trophies in Spanish and European football, he quickly established himself as the team’s key player and main goal threat. In this first biography of the Atleti and France star, Madrid-based journalist Luca Caioli examines the story behind Griezmann’s rise to the top.
Messi vs. Ronaldo 2017
In 2009 Real Madrid paid £80m, a then record fee, to sign a ready-made superstar in an effort to keep pace with a Barcelona side that had won it all. In doing so, they sparked a rivalry like no other; Messi vs Ronaldo. Drawing on testimonies from those closest to the two stars, Luca Caioli tells the inside story of this fascinating rivalry.
Messi, Neymar, Ronaldo 2017
Lionel Messi, Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo have risen from humble beginnings in Argentina, Brazil and Portugal to rank among the most exciting talents football has ever seen. Comparing their contrasting styles, stories, records and awards, Caioli presents a unique insight into what makes a modern player not just successful, but truly great.
Suarez 2016: The Remarkable Story Behind
Luis Suarez is one of the most brilliant and controversial players in world football. Signed by Barcelona in 2014 despite a lengthy ban for biting an opponent, he quickly became a central figure in their sensational treble-winning campaign. However, a history of violent on-pitch incidents has left supporters wondering whether the maverick centre forward can ever completely conquer his demons. This updated biography offers a unique behind-the-scenes look at the life and career of one of football’s most enigmatic stars.
Balotelli
Mario Balotelli has a reputation like no other in football. Since exploding on to the scene at Inter Milan in 2007, he has won league titles in both Italy and England, moving between Europe’s elite clubs. With exclusive access to friends, teammates and coaches, acclaimed football biographer Luca Caioli talks to the people best placed to explain the mystery that is Mario Balotelli.
Martial
On 1 September 2015, Anthony Martial completed his transfer from Monaco to Manchester United. At just 19 years of age, the fee of £36m (potentially rising to £58m) made the France international the most expensive teenager of all time. Renowned sports biographers Luca Caioli and Cyril Collot talk to coaches, teammates and even Martial himself, to provide an unrivalled behind-the-scenes look at the life of the teenage superstar.
Match of the Day Annual 2018
Complete with fun football trivia, quizzes, games, puzzles, top 10s, cartoons and more, this is the only annual fans of the beautiful game will need. Featuring Gary and all of the MOTD presenters, Paz, Bez and the planet’s top teams and players, Match of the Day Annual 2017 is the best around – it will be on the top of your Christmas list!
The Football Shirts Book
From the obscure to the ubiquitous, A Lover’s Guide to Football Shirts is packed with over 150 original and super rare shirts from the greatest game on earth. Covering everything from the iconic to the unusual, even the most hard-core fans will find out something new about the kit of their favourite team. Including full-colour photography, this guide offers a full exploration of the brands, design and sponsorship history behind the world’s best-loved football shirts..
Match of the Day: 50 Years of Football
Remember Sergio Aguero’s late goal to win the title for Man City? Or, best of all, Geoff Hurst’s hat-trick winning the World Cup for England in 1966? Over half a century, Match of the Day has witnessed some of the greatest moments in football history, week in, week out. In this milestone 50th year, Match of the Day celebrates the very best of the drama and the heartache. With evocative memorabilia and photography throughout, relive the story of the beautiful game, season-by-season.
The Periodic Table of Football
You can never take what you love too seriously and The Periodic Table of Football celebrates this fact. Instead of hydrogen to helium, here you’ll find Pelé to Sepp Blatter – 108 elements from the football pantheon arranged by their properties and behaviour on and off the pitch. This expert guide and accompanying poster spans over 150 years to offer an original perspective of the beautiful game.
The Football Manager’s Guide to Football Management
The Football Manager Guide to Football Management is for anyone who has ever believed that they could do a better job than their club’s manager. It’s for anyone who has ever tried to prove that point by taking the hot seat in the management simulation Football Manager. So if, at any point in your life, you have imagined yourself in a tracksuit, waving your arms in the air on the touchline, with your perfect XI scribbled on the back of a beer mat and thinking ahead to the press conference, then this book is for you. After all, you’re already a football manager… you just haven’t been appointed yet.
Barefoot to Boots: The Many Lives of Indian Football
A thrilling account of the incredible journey of Indian football. In Barefoot to Boots, renowned journalist Novy Kapadia reveals Indian football’s glorious legacy through riveting descriptions of on-field action, stories of memorable matches, lively anecdotes, and exclusive conversations with legendary players and officials.
The Football Book
The ultimate visual guide to planet football. Revised and updated to include details of all the stats, goal tallies and cup wins so you can now relive the excitement of the Brazil 2014 World Cup. With The Football Book, you’ll discover the finest moments of the players, coaches and teams who have created football history and learn everything from match highlights to the inside stories on the players, managers and fans.
Football – Bloody Hell!
Sir Alex Ferguson is the most controversial and compelling figure in football. For many he ranks as the greatest manager of all time. He is certainly the most successful. Ferguson has been instrumental in making the Premier League the most successful competition in football, and he has endured while the mountains of cash have turned to valleys of debt. Throughout, award-winning journalist Patrick Barclay has been pitch-side and spoken to all those who know Ferguson best – fellow managers, former players, colleagues and commentators. The result is Football – Bloody Hell!: the definitive work on the game’s greatest living legend.
Matt Busby: The Definitive Biography
Sir Matt Busby, who took Manchester United to unprecedented glory before seeing the club through profound tragedy, created the global entity that spreads from Old Trafford today. In this definitive biography, Patrick Barclay looks back at Busby’s phenomenal life and career, including the rise of the Busby Babes in the 1950s, the Munich disaster that claimed 23 lives and the Wembley victory ten years on that made United the first English team to win the European Cup.
The Illustrated History of Football
In The Illustrated History of Football, his first book, David Squires relives some of football’s most glorious moments and meets its greatest figures. In a sport full of handsome paycheques and corporate sponsors, he also casts a critical eye over corrupt backroom workings and helps pierce football’s overblown balloon. Funny, good-looking and preternaturally astute, this book is everything Sepp Blatter wishes he could be.
How to Watch Football
How can one striker be better than three? Why do the best defenders never need to make a tackle? What’s the secret of Tiki-taka? Welcome to Ruud Gullit’s masterclass on how to ‘read’ a match. From his unrivalled perspective as player, manager and pundit, the Dutch football legend shows us everything to look for in a 90-minute match. From formations and tactical decisions to player qualities and pivotal moments, Ruud Gullit unveils the hidden patterns on the pitch – as if he’s sitting right there on the sofa next to you.
The Secret Footballer: What Goes on Tour
Since his first book was published in 2012, The Secret Footballer has been able to take the reader behind the scenes of footballers’ lives like no other player has been able, or will ever be able, to do. From Marbella and Ibiza to Dubai and Las Vegas, The Secret Footballer lays bare the worst, most embarrassing and most hilarious excesses of these fit and mostly fickle young men whose million-pound salaries, to use his own words, ‘open up a host of recreational opportunities’.
Why Soccer Matters
The world’s most popular sport goes by many names – soccer, football, the beautiful game – but fans have always agreed on one thing: The greatest player of all time was Pele. During his twenty-year career, he was heralded as an international treasure and his accomplishments on the field proved to be pure magic. Now, for the first time, the legendary star and humanitarian explores the sport’s recent history and provides new insights into the game.
The Fall of the House of FIFA
In this definitive account of FIFA’s rise and fall, David Conn, the game’s most respected investigative journalist, chronicles its earnest foundation in 1904 and its work developing football around the world, through to the staggering sweep and breadth of scandal now uncovered and the controversial votes that sent the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar.
The Book of Football Quotations
This compilation includes quotes from everyone – Shakespeare to Suarez, Camus to Cantona, Busby to Beckham – who has made an apt, pithy or comical comment about football. And not just footballers and managers either – fans, pundits, groundsmen, directors and wives all get to have their say too. Every subject is covered, from tactical debates to changing lifestyles, to produce a sometimes hilarious and always thought-provoking commentary on the game.
Messi
This definitive biography profiles the Argentinean soccer star of FC Barcelona, Lionel Messi. It also discusses his early childhood success, his training with the Barcelona junior team, and features fun facts like his favorite foods and his pet peeves. Updated throughout with new stats from the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
Messi, Neymar & Suarez
Lionel Messi, an attacking genius and longtime player on FC Barcelona, is widely recognized as one of the greatest soccer players in history. When the emerging Brazilian talent Neymar joined him in 2013, they became known as the Invincible Duo. Then, when the colorful Luis Suarez joined their roster the following year, the most unbeatable attacking unit in history had been created. Together, this trio has scored a record-breaking number of goals, and has proven time and again that their strategic unit outshines each player on his own.
Ronaldo
The story of the “ultimate footballer,” Cristiano Ronaldo. Covers the star’s youth in Madeira, his nicknames, his record with Manchester United, and includes a list of the numerous awards he has received. Updated throughout with stats from the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
Stars of World Soccer
Everyone knows Messi and Ronaldo–the current twin peaks of the most popular sport in the world–but who are their main competitors and their fiercest rivals for the crown of modern soccer? With colorful photography and fun facts, this lively and accessible book provides some answers: Stars of World Soccer tells you who these players are, where they come from, and what they have accomplished.
Stars of the World Cup: World Soccer
Learn all about twenty-eight of the best players competing for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, from unstoppable scorers like Messi and Ronaldo to crafty playmakers like Iniesta and Modric, and ironclad defenders like Philipp Lahm and Thiago Silva. Get the inside scoop on their strengths and weaknesses heading into the showdown in Brazil. See incredible action shots of their on-field wizardry.
